If you want the best clocks then the Crosshair for sure. I owned a Sabertooth and it had nothing on the Crosshair IV I had before in terms of overclocking with the same chip.

It really is situational. The CPU you are trying to OC along with BIOS I believe will be your largest factors there. As if you are overclocking a Phenom II AM3 CPU, the Crosshair IV was built and optimized around that platform. Whilst the Sabertooth 990fx was designed and optimized for your bulldozer, pildriver(and hopefully steamroller when released) AM3+ platforms. The backwards compatibility is a plus but it surely can affect overclockability. Maybe someone else can verify this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deadboy90

Ok but how can the crosshair be better at OCing than the Sabertooth? Both are 8+2 power phase boards

When comparing todays Crosshair V and the Sabertooth 990fx boards there isn't much of a difference if any with how they will overclock any cpu. They are built very similarly with small differences in the bells and whistles attached to them. I have seen just as many Sabertooth boards outclock Crosshair Boards as I have seen the other way around. At that point it is silicon lottery with the CPU and ability of the individual doing the overclocking will give you the biggest differences.

The crosshair is a great board but I just switched to a sabertooth r2 while going from a fx8120 to a fx8320. Gotta say they are very similar. I am sitting at 4.6GHz and have no problems. Had a few weird ones with the crosshair V (not the z).

The crosshair is a great board but I just switched to a sabertooth r2 while going from a fx8120 to a fx8320. Gotta say they are very similar. I am sitting at 4.6GHz and have no problems. Had a few weird ones with the crosshair V (not the z).

hope you like your new board

imo crosshair is more for L2N ocing. it is a great board. i have a saberkitty and love it. most of the same stuff.

Quote:

Originally Posted by shilka

The thermal armor on the Sabertooth is one of the most silly ideas Asus has come up with

Go with the Crosshair

the board you refer to is an intel board. the amd sabertooth has none of this. although i think it does look good and clean ( especially if you paint it white.)